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Web Letter

Sean, I'm wondering, how far does this insanity need to go before you to realize your pal is a thug?

Web Letter

What can I say!? Well done Sean, you are brilliant in every way!

And a big hello to my mate Chávez, and to Raúl... with whom I have my differences.

Web Letter

I thought this publication took itself and its readers seriously. Why, why, why would you dedicate space on your website and in your magazine to such an ill-informed, poorly constructed piece of faux journalism as what Mr. Penn has produced here?

The cover, of all things?

Let's save the mindless celebrity drivel for the Huffington Post, and keep The Nation's pages reserved for the top-notch, intelligent, thought-provoking journalism (written by real journalists) for which they were once reserved.

Web Letter

A number of businesses have been criticized for branching out into areas where they cannot compete in the market. The line of reasoning is, pick a single commodity and do it well. Don't try to sell tires and lingerie at the same time. The same can apply to individuals.

Sean Penn, a good, though not great, actor, is not the best interpreter of world affairs, nor would I want him as my "goodwill ambassador at large." It is interesting to note that his best performances have not been in those heavy-handed, propagandistic films like Milk or the All the King's Men remake.

It was really a shame that this fall, while US liberals and progressives were going on and on about Sarah Palin as some "threat" to democracy (a threat to intellectual curiosity for sure, but not to democracy), Venezuela's Huga Chávez was expelling two members of Human Rights Watch. (Not that Human Rights Watch hasn't made mistakes in the past, like the Kuwait faux pas, but for the most part they are reliable and very responsible and nonpartisan.) But did I read about it in The Nation? No. Did I read about it in IPS Press? No. I did, however, read it in La Jornada, Mexico City's left-leaning daily.

I've read Eva Golinger's very revealing book The Chávez Code (Olive Branch, 2006), about our meddling in Venezuela's elections and the funding of right-wing organizations. However, that said, Chávez has in all honesty turned increasingly intolerant. It is caudillismo of the left that he is reviving, and that is anathema to true democracy. Latin American leftists need to realize this and so too, Mr. Penn, who also needs to stick to acting.

Web Letter

Thanks, Sean. As someone who has spent fifteen years or so trying to find truths in the sea of red herrings and spinmeisters, I have come to regard Sean Penn as one of true heroes of modern times. We have many heroes: Amy Goodman, Bill Greider, Stansfield Turner, Phil Agee, etc. It's a curious lot of persons determined to expose and undermine the hypocrisy that exemplifies the group that has maintained a stranglehold on our fictitious democratic republic for 60 some years.

I will resist being long-winded and simply add this simple soliliquy to the accolades well deserved by Mr. Penn.

War concentrates wealth, peace lifts all boats. Hail to John Perkins.

Cuba sií, Hugo sií, Ortega sií,

Bush (the offspring of a sophisticated and treasonous assassin and no small murderer himself) an emphatic no.

Web Letter

I am an immigrant to the US from Iran and will soon be a citizen. I have followed Mr. Penn closely since his visits with Saddam Hussein. He is obviously unhappy with the US. He should move to Iran and protest the abuse of people there. But wait, they would kill him in response. How does the US have so many natives who hate their own county? Nowhere else would I have opportunity like I have here. Yet Mr. Penn seems popular. I see him for what he is: traitor to his homeland.

Web Letter

First, congratulations to Mr. Sean Penn for this amazing article. What is happening in Venezuela is what has happened just recently in the USA, some Americans supported McCain, others Barack Obama. But who is really the winner? The winner is who gets the majority of votes. In this world you cannot please everybody, but you can please the majority. If Chávez has been in power for so many years with more than ten elections and even a referendum, it is because the majority of Venezuelan people support him. We can blame his goverment for not taking enough hard action against crime in Venezuela, but what we can really show off is what UNESCO says about education in Venezuela :"The 2005 Education for All Global Monitoring Report showed that the country’s schooling rates are among the region’s top ten." Or maybe better, what ECLAC says about the economy of Venezuela statistically. I must mention that ECLAC belongs to the UN, a organization that researched the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean.

It's sometimes ironic the way the media can cover a comment from Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, against IFM, compared to the way they would do it if Chávez made the same comment. And why? Because we have to make Chávez be seen as a dictator? a terrible communist? How would Latin America have been if the USA had never been inside our continent stealing our resources and making our people more illiterate and more poor? Why can we not let countries be run in the way their people want? Especially if this country has a democratically elected president. We cannot even compare one country with another, and not even expect a president to run a country in the way another does it, because each country has different needs. The most powerful tool is giving to the people education, including them in society and making them feel useful. I just hope and wish latinoamerican countries get together and work together in peace for the best.

Thanks so much for visiting my country!

Web Letter

I couldn't read beyond the opening paragraph, in which Saddam is mildly rebuked as a "shmuck." How could I possibly credit a single thing he has to say after that? Penn hates being lied to, he hates having his intelligence insulted, but gives me this shit?

Web Letter

"Having said that, I'm a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban leadership, I could be jailed.... I consider mentioning this, and perhaps should have, but I've got something else on my mind."

Something else on your mind? Perhaps it was the delightful glass of red wine you were sipping in the company of a man who locks up writers in deplorable conditions. Let's not beat around the bush. Sean Penn, you're a self-regarding child. Would you have sat down to dinner with some old-fashioned Latin American caudillo who locked up writers? Of course you wouldn't. So why sit down with Raúl? Because it tickles your infantile vanity to sit down with a hero of the left--but a grubby dictator just the same. I'm Sean Penn! Look at me! I'm making a difference!

You justify it by telling yourself that, oh well, if there was an election, he would get 80 percent of the vote. I wonder if you actually believe that. Ask yourself this, Sean: why doesn't Raúl hold an election? What a wonderful way, at a stroke, of demonstrating unarguable legitimacy, silencing the critics, and de-legitimising, ata a stroke, the entire raison d'étre of sanctions.

Did that occur to you, Sean? Or perhaps you had something else on your mind?

Web Letter

As a Cuban-American it saddens me to see people like Sean Penn use the media to make a mockery of the suffering of the Cuban people and the Venezuelans under these tyrants. To cuddle up to these animals and have wine and dinner while the very people they oppress starve right outside the door is despicable.

To people like Sean Penn in the end it doesn't matter because it was an adventure, a kind of safari through the darker parts of the world and, besides, the tyrants said their subjects love them, right? Best of all, Sean, you get to go home to the US in a couple of hours feeling great that you did your small part to bring the sides together for world peace, right?

However, the people of Cuba, as will soon be true of the people of Venezuela, have no rights and live in misery and fear. They are beaten or killed when they don't conform. A good indicator of the level of oppression in Cuba is how many have died or have been killed, many with children, trying to leave the island. I wish I could give you a number, but it could be hundreds of thousands--no one will ever know.

Yet Mr. Penn wants to portray these two tyrants as reasonable leaders, and even Christians! Even though they have no problem allowing the wholesale murder of hundreds or thousands of people, even children in their own countries or any other country they can exploit. To Sean that's not the main topic, so let's not sweat the small stuff like murder, oppression and starvation, in Cuba's case for fifty years. Lets have some more of that tea with the old revolutionary, and oh yeah, let's blame the US for all of it.

The plainly evident reason Sean and those like him enjoy being in the company of these animals is that they like the attention it gets them. You see, Sean and his ilk and the tyrants they willingly serve want to be considered enlightened intellectual peacemakers, righteous rebels, but in reality they are only dangerously shallow egomaniacs who lust for power. It's just that in the tyrant's case they are willing to kill, maim and destroy anyone, even their own countries to get it. In Sean's case, he is willing to turn a blind eye to the destruction and oppression just so he can feel special and important again and play journalist.

Sean, I hope you can hear the laughter, because the tyrants are not laughing with you, they are laughing at you, because you were willing to give up your dignity, your humanity and integrity for a photo op and tea with a tyrant, and unfortunately it's not a movie, you don't get them back.

So go ahead and cry about the election of Obama like you actually mean it, you're good at that. Someone needs to remind you that those of us that truly admire American men and women who fought and died fighting tyrants and oppression, like the ones you admire and prostitute for, consider you a hypocrite of the worse kind. With all America's imperfections these men and women paved the way for Obama's historic election, and misguided egomanics like you express a wanton ignorance of the facts.

Think about it, Sean, you're in the company of people who admire Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Hussein, etc. and consider their tactics visionary, but don't worry about it, just listen to the laughter, Sean, they are all laughing at you.